Tag Archives: Boskeun

Oerbier is the flagship beer of the de Dolle Brouwers, and was the first beer to be launched by the Mad Brothers. The name of the beer roughly translates as ‘primitive beer’, ‘original beer’, or ‘beer from the source’ – a title which reflects the evolutionary nature of both the beer and the brewery.

The de Dolle Brouwers story first began in 1980 following brothers Kris and Jo Herteleer’s attempts to make home brew from English supermarket kits. They were still at college at the time and making a shed load of experimental beers. Eventually they decided to enter a competition in Brussels, and they picked one of their 35 creations. Amazingly this Oerbier won, and the cash first prize was all the incentive they needed to begin their new business.

The success of the Oerbier was really down to a change of approach from the Mad Brothers. The initial efforts at brewing hadn’t really yielded anything worthwhile, so they opted to use the finest natural ingredients – spring water, fresh hops and yeast, only malt, and strictly no colouring, preservatives or filtering! This philosophy has continued to guide de Dolle Brouwers to cult success now across the world where their beers are revered. The Oerbier continues to be the flagship beer, and the small yellow man on the label continues to represent the brand. The cartoon figure is a sprouting yeast cell, who carries a mashing fork in one hand and the perfect glass of Oerbier in the other. The year Anno 1980 represents the date the brewery began, and the words Nat en Straf literally translate as ‘Wet and Strong’, which is a pretty decent analogy of the Oerbier, although it has been even stronger at times.

The real beauty of the Oerbier, which may frustrate those who seek consistency, is that each annual effort is brewed differently. I found this out later in my journey when I tried an older version at the Kulminator bar in Antwerp. When the beer was first made it used Rodenbach yeasts which left the beer at around 7%. Eventually in around 1988 once Palm had taken over Rodenbach, the de Dolle Brouwers started to evolve their own mad strains from the original yeast and the ABV rocketed. In around 2000 the beer was over 10%. Nat en Straf indeed!

The 9% version of the Oerbier I tried was simply immense. It poured a beautiful conker brown with an attractive mop of white head glistening like an oasis on the top. There was an adequate dosing of sediment which added to the experience, and the aromas were far too abundant to even begin trying to decipher. The first taste was divine, a sweet and complex meaty brew that scintillated every taste bud. Again, there were so many flavours that I couldn’t begin to tell the story. It’s not often I drool over beers, but this and the Boskeun (#82) are easily amongst my top five brews – so much so that on my last trip to Belgium I called in to the brewery to stock up on supplies and get my own flagship glass.

You might expect a beer that is named after a mountaineer to be based somewhere alpine, but as we have already elicited from the Abbaye des Rocs Brune (#67), the area around the village of Montignies-sur-Rocs forms part of the High Lands National Park. It isn’t mountainous but you could argue it is a little bit hilly. It is for this reason that inhabitants of the village are called Montagnards. This beer is therefore somewhat of a tribute to the people from Montignies-sur-Rocs.

It is very much a village famous for its beer, thus the female brewer Natalie Eloir is something of a local heroine, although there have been other famous female Montagnards. One of these was the French Countess Jeanne de Belleville who laid her hat here at the end of the 19th Century – it is after all a pretty impressive and beautiful place for a Countess to settle. She lasted here until the Great War in 1914 where she did her bit as a nurse at the British military hospital of Audregnies. The nearby Battle of Mons which the allies were to lose however was to be a turning point for the Countess who had assisted getting stranded British soldiers to safety. She was subsequently arrested by the Germans in 1915 accused of “treason in time of war”.

Belleville was part of the underground network set up by Edith Cavell which worked against the Germans, and she was subsequently sentenced to death later that year. Cavell however was unfortunate enough to have been executed first, and such was the outcry from nations such as England, Spain and the USA, that the Germans agreed to commute the Countess and her compatriot’s sentences to life imprisonment. She would see out the rest of the war in the concentration camp at Sieberg until liberation came in 1918. It was Edith Cavell who would end up the martyr, but one should never forget the actions of this Montagnard.

The beer itself is an absolute delight, and almost certainly one of the best beers I have had to date. It was a delicious blend of strength, sweetness, viscosity and spice which tantalised the taste buds. It is a remarkable feat to engineer a beer that is at once sharp and bitter, and yet leaves you overwhelmingly with the addictive flavours of caramel and toffee. This was as close a beer as I had found to Boskeun (#82) which is still the pinnacle for me thus far on this journey, yet with the La Montagnarde, the Eloirs may have created a more stable and consistent contender. I get the impression the Boskeun might have an off day once in a while, but this little treat will always taste as good. A perfect tribute to a real local hero.

The second beer in a week from De Dolle Brouwers, and this time one of the two staple brews on which much of their regular sales rely. Oerbier (#208) started it all off when the eccentric Herteleer family won their beer competition, but Arabier was to follow shortly after. This is a much drier beer, brewed with pure malt and spiced by dry-hopping using the typical Poperinge Nugget-hops. It is almost the complete opposite of Boskeun (#82) in that sense – the only other De Dolle beer I had tried to date.

Some have claimed that the title Arabier was given to the beer due to its dryness, pointing to the fact that Arabier translates into ‘an inhabitant of Arabia’ and after all, Arabia is a pretty arid place. Without the exact reason given by the brewery, one may wish to follow this line of thought, although a further clue seems to point more in the direction of the small colourful parrot who sits on the label with a glass of beer in its hand. It is surely not a coincidence that Ara is a genus of colourful macaw parrot that inhabits the South American continent. We have already established a link between brother Jo and South America (#82), and we can probably safely assume this is a much more likely, although no less logical, reason for the name of the beer.

Quite what the Ara has to do with beer is debatable, although they are renowned for their colourful plumage and distinctive exuberance. If you get to meet any of the Herteleers or visit the brewery/art exhibitions in Esen, it is not hard to find a subtle relationship between the two. The main diet of the Ara is also seeds, which funnily enough is essentially the main ingredient in beer.

Arabier itself is impressive, and it certainly justified its entry in the top 100 Belgian Beers book I had recently bought. Very hoppy and full of flavours, although certainly not an Orval (#37), but perhaps a more mellow and fruity deputy. I sat back and watched Ukraine end Englands’ 100% record in the World Cup Qualifying group – a sadly indistinguished occasion for a beer this good.

De Dolle Brouwers literally means ‘the mad brothers’, and if you have ever called in on the brewery premises and looked about you will probably understand why. There were originally three Herteleer brothers, Kris, Jo and Ward, who purchased the brewery premises in 1980 after they won a local beer brewing competition. Kris is the master brewer and can normally be spotted in a mad company jacket serving at the ramshackle bar. Ward is almost the silent partner, but has become more involved in recent years, and Jo is the brother for whom Boskeun is named. Boskeun literally translates as the Hare of the Wood, which is the image that can be seen on the label and all over my website for that matter. When the brothers were younger, Jo was injured in some kind of play fight, ending up with a scar above his lip. The other boys teased him about this ‘hare-lip’ (keun) and thus the name stuck.

Jo Herteleer was fairly active in the brewery, and tended to prefer brewing the blonder beers. Wanderlust eventually got the better of him however, and he found himself heading off to South America where again he continued to brew the odd beer. Boskeun would be the last beer however that he would brew in Belgium. Jo still lives and works in South America undertaking a variation of useful roles in governmental and non-governmental co-operations, and most recently working on a number of health projects in Quito, Ecuador.

The beer itself simply blew me away. It certainly wasn’t the most attractive 330 ml I would ever drink, with about an inch deep of rich meaty sediment – I almost had to repour it through a strainer but that would probably have ended up detracting from the experience. It was a pale brown colour, but rich in legs, and smelling remarkably like a warm caramel covered apple pie. This beer was a dessert in itself. As an Easter brew (the clue is the rabbit), it is brewed with Mauritian cane sugar, and Mexican honey in the mash, and you definitely knew it. It was extremely sweet, but also remarkably delicious. I have since tried to get hold of other bottles but with not much luck. As an Easter beer it is only really available the two months before Easter, and even then can be removed up to two weeks before. The brewery recommend calling them before to reserve it. Other distributors do stock it, but like I say nothing is guaranteed. If you see it BUY IT !